Search results for: "Skillfulness"

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  2. Heedful of Death
     … The point being that the most important skill you can develop is the skill that’s able to let go. Whatever appears in the mind that’s causing any kind of weight or concern, you’re able to let it go. This may sound irresponsible, but it’s an important skill that you need to develop, even as you negotiate the issues of every … 
  3. The Raft of Concepts
    The Raft of Concepts August 3, 2007 When you start out meditating, you have to think — but in a skillful way. In other words, directed thought and evaluation are factors of right concentration on the level of first jhana. Even if you can get into concentration really quickly, it requires some thinking to get you there. And if you get into concentration slowly, you … 
  4. Delight
     … It not only presents the issues, but also solves them in a skillful and honorable way, pointing to a happiness that’s free from aging, free from illness, free from death. Take delight in that. The next two types of delight are delight in developing and delight in abandoning: in other words, developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones. The Buddha recommends this from … 
  5. Honest & Observant
     … This is one of the other prerequisites for not being overcome by past bad kamma—that you don’t let the mind be overcome by pleasure—and this is how you learn that skill. You give the mind a skillful pleasure like this and you learn how to develop the right attitude toward it. When pleasure comes, we usually try to gobble it down … 
  6. Training Your Inner Critic
     … You’re going to be measured by how you held to the standards of skillful conduct, i.e., harmless conduct. That’s going to shape your future. The noble ones want to see you shaping your future in a skillful way. They believe that you can do it. After all, the Buddha said that if people couldn’t develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful … 
  7. A Rite of Passage
     … So we need a place to step away from them to see if they’re really skillful. Those are the two things: step away and see what’s skillful. Meditation gives you a place to step away, because it teaches you to step away from your thoughts. If you’re going to get the mind still, you can’t get involved with any thought … 
  8. Defeatism? - Anything But
     … They’ve done studies of people who are especially skilled in their areas of expertise. And they found that the ones who are excellent, as opposed to those who are merely good in those particular fields, have a very strong sense that if the skill is not mastered, there’s danger. If the skill is mastered, there’s going to be wellbeing. There’s … 
  9. A Sense of Yourself
     … And it’s easier to apply that perception and have it work when you have other things that you can identify with that are actually skillful. You can’t create a skillful sense of self if there are no skills to back it up. It’s just an empty concept, and you start thinking that you’re lying to yourself. But if you actually … 
  10. The Languages of Right View
     … You can create new, more skillful conversations in a new, more skillful language. So in a lot of ways learning how to meditate is like learning a new language. In fact, you’ve got two languages: the language of mundane right view and the language of the four noble truths. And you want to learn how to use both of them when they’re … 
  11. As Days & Nights Fly Past
     … This is because there are areas in the practice where it is useful to develop a healthy sense of self, a skillful sense of self. This reflection is meant to develop that skillful sense of self through heedfulness, because all skillful qualities in mind come from being heedful. For a lot of people, as days and nights fly past, all they can think about … 
  12. To Keep You Going
     … He often compares all the different skills needed on the path to the skills of archers and cooks, carpenters, musicians: people who learn to take pride in their craft and enjoy doing it well. This means that we’re concerned not only with the happiness that comes from having completed the work, but also with learning how to enjoy the work while you’re … 
  13. The Four Noble Truths
     … It requires a range of skills, not just one. But when you’ve got your full range of skills, you’ve got yourself protected on all sides. Like those movies of the martial arts artist who’s got people coming in from four directions and he can fight them all off. When you’ve got a range of skills on all sides, then you … 
  14. The Power of Your Actions
     … That’s when this principle of acting on skillful intentions and abandoning unskillful ones begins to develop a power. And as the Buddha noted, as you try to be constantly skillful, you’re safe, but it wears the mind down. The mind needs to rest. You could spend some time sleeping, but that’s not necessarily skillful. This is why he says that you … 
  15. Self-reliance
     … The word for ignorance, avijja, can also mean lack of skill. We suffer because we lack skill. But skill is something that can be developed. In fact, you have to develop it yourself. No one else can make you skillful. They can give pointers, they can give advice, but to become skillful you have to be observant of what you’re doing and what … 
  16. Universal Truths
     … One is the distinction between skillful and unskillful action in thought, word, and deed, and the fact that unskillful actions should be abandoned, and skillful actions developed. And the other is the four noble truths: stress, its origination, its cessation, and the path of practice leading to its cessation. That’s it. Those are the teachings he taught as really basic. Those are the … 
  17. The Power to Transcend Suffering
     … A couple of years back, The *New Yorker *had an article on people who developed physical skills. The author analyzed the skills of a skilled brain surgeon, atheletes, musicians—people like Wayne Gretzky, Yo Yo Ma, Michael Jordan. He talked about the qualities these people all had in common. One was that they really enjoyed what they were doing, they found it fun. The … 
  18. Happy About Kamma
     … The skillful way is to say, “Well, I must have some past bad kamma, so I’ll learn how to take it in stride and not get too worked up about it. And I’ll take it as an incentive to try to be more skillful in the future.” As for times when someone does something really nice to you, again, there are skillful … 
  19. The Path Is in the Details
     … You do have the freedom with each and every moment to choose to do the skillful thing, to choose to be honest about your intentions, so that you can check to see whether they’re skillful or not. If they’re unskillful, you can drop them. This is all very basic, basic work. It’s the Interstate 15 and Interstate 40 of our practice … 
  20. Judging Just Right
     … So we’re approaching this as a skill to make the concentration just right. And it’s in making it a skill that our discernment develops. It’s the same with the middle way as a whole. It’s very easy to practice in extremes. Sometimes it might be exhausting, but it’s easy in the sense that you don’t have to do … 
  21. A Noble Warrior’s Path
     … to train you in skills, to develop your ingenuity, to fire up your fighting spirit, to give you maxims to keep in mind when the going gets tough so that you can approach difficult situations with skill. To keep those words in mind, those instructions in mind, without losing your presence of mind in difficult situations: That’s the function of right mindfulness. But … 
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